La reine blanche

This unpretentious romantic comedy of mores manages to mix an old-time folksy movie feel with a very adult confrontation of first love remembered and present marital status in the quintessentially French milieu of provincial France which has also been the time and place chosen by Jacques Demy (Nantes, 1960) for his magic realist story-telling ("Les Parapluies de Cherbourg", "Lola","Les Demoiselles de Rochefort"). Catherine Deneuve has never been more believable as an "ordinary housewife" and her co-stars are just as impressive and convincing. Georges Delerue's music insures that the viewer gets all dewy-eyed at all the right moments. The result is what used to be called "movie magic".

Georges Delerue's score is exquisite:it deals with nostalgia and all those voyages we've never made.

Hubert is the perfect craftsman:he gets back to the pre-nouvelle vague era ,when the directors did not contemplate their navel,when pretension was unknown,when a story to tell was the only thing that mattered....when the actors were so good they could run the whole gamut without overacting.

"La reine blanche" is all that.Too bad for the highbrows who relish watching again and again Rohmer ,Resnais or Rivette .I'm not an intellectual and I love being told a story.And I always will. Hubert's film tells an absorbing tale of two men who have been fighting for the same woman during their childhood and adolescence.One of them had to leave for the Islands (La Guadeloupe).Twenty years later ,he comes back with a black wife and three children,one of his girls is a beauty.The other has married his first love and lives with her father and his children .The two men (Bohringer and Giraudeau,both brilliant)meet again and seem happy to be together again.But..

"La reine blanche" recreates 1960 in the provinces ,near Nantes with its balls ,its songs ,its popular fetes,its procession of floats.There's also a nod to Jacques Demy's "Lola" when Giraudeau and Deneuve have an argument in a famous street of Nantes.

You've got to pay attention to notice all the important things Hubert includes in his script.Racism is veiled but it is latent and it may resurface when you do not expect it.

All the actors are wonderful.Giraudeau is the stand-out :his joviality hides a repressed hatred and a resentment which emerges from time to time.He is hilarious as a peanuts street peddler complete with monkey on his back.Bohringer matches him every step of the way in his part of tough guy with a tender heart .Catherine Deneuve proves that she can play a simple woman convincingly.The sadly missed Jean Carmet shines as her father,who's more than fond of the bottle.Good support comes from the black actresses too.

You leave "la reine blanche" overjoyed because you know that there are still directors who have not forgotten that cinema is first the magic of storytelling.I do not go much for gastronomy.I'd rather have a good soup.

There are not many movies that I stop watching in between, even. This was an exception. One hour through, that is half of its length, and still nothing but boredom.

So far nothing remarkable. I am not talking about the plot. I am talking about cinema. Looks pretty much like a beginner's work; except of a few scenes with Catherine Deneuve.

Since Bunuel we know that she's a real great actress, but not with much matter between her ears. This shows in this movie. She could have made it her movie, had she had the intellect to pick up all the holes full of emptiness.

What did they think, with this script, this cast, that they could achieve?

One hour of boring scenes of her youth-time wanna-be-lovers, interrupted by those few scenes when Deneuve went on acting instead of not knowing what to do, and some reasonable scenes with her father.

The stereotype stuff of one of her suitors back from the tropics without money, but a black wife and three black kids, no money, and resentful, is flat.

The plumber-husband with a boring, insensitive mental horizon doesn't add anything.

One hour into this flick, the only item that looks somewhat promising, and yet still quite stereotyped, is the developing friendship between the elder daughters of both men.

Please, come back and tell me, that the second half is one beyond a turning point in film making; and I'll watch the second half, too. Promised!